Dr. Alexey Root

Dr. Alexey Root will present twice at the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented (TAGT) annual conference. Her presentations, both on Thursday, December 4, are Why Academic Competitions for G/T Students? Insights from Coaches, Parents, and Students (with Dr. Joseph Eberhard) from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. and Chess for Elementary, Middle School, and High School Students (with Ann Boodt) from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. For the rest of Thursday, she will be at The University of Texas at Dallas booth (#419) in the exhibit hall, discussing her online courses and her books.

The tenth and last meeting of the fall semester was for awards. A special cause for celebration was Greenhill School's first place finish November 15 at the "Fit for a King Chess Tournament" at the Episcopal School of Dallas, run by UT Dallas chess program volunteers. After the awards, Dr. Alexey Root supervised bughouse games.

This week, students continued with the fork problem worksheet begun last week. Most pairs completed three or four more problems. A couple of pairs of advanced players finished the worksheet and played Battleship Chess, an exercise from Children and Chess: A Guide for Educators.

Dr. Alexey Root taught forks using problems from Bruce Pandolfini’s Beginning Chess (New York: Fireside, 1993). Dr. Root demonstrated a sample fork position and had students define what a fork is in chess. Then pairs of students set up positions following instructions such as “W: Kf1, Qd1, B: Ke8, Ne4, Pe7. White to move.” After studying the position, students wrote the answer in algebraic notation.

Dr. Alexey Root gave one example of a checkmate and one of a stalemate on the demonstration board. Then she asked Greenhill School students to pair up and then create four checkmates and two stalemates. Beginner and intermediate students got to use a white king, white queen, and black king. Advanced students used a white king, white rook, and black king.

Dr. Alexey Root traveled to St. Louis for the launch of the Journal of Chess Research. While there, she got to visit the chess tourist sites (Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis and the World Chess Hall of Fame). Also, Grandmaster Susan Polgar showed her around Webster University, home of the national collegiate chess champions.

Greenhill Chess Club students played the Game Theory challenge from Thinking with Chess: Teaching Children Ages 5-14. The advanced group had to notate their “castling” games, while the other two groups did not.

For October 14, Dr. Alexey Root taught the Tandem Chess exercise from People, Places, Checkmates: Teaching Social Studies with Chess. Students in the A group partnered with students in the C group. B group students partnered together. Thus teams were balanced to play one tandem game as White and one tandem game as Black against another team. For example, a team of a A and C player played two tandem games versus a team of two B players.

The beginners learned the values of the chessmen, for example a queen is worth nine pawns. Then the beginners played Exercise 7 “Queen versus Rook and Bishop.” from Read, Write, Checkmate: Enrich Literacy with Chess Activities.

Dr. Alexey Root will present about “Chess in Libraries and Schools” on Friday, October 10 (2-4 p.m., Dorris Van Doren Branch Library) and Saturday, October 11 (10 a.m. to noon, Ysleta Branch Library). These El Paso, Texas presentations are free and open to the public. The October 11 presentation is followed by a chess tournament.

Dr. Root asked how to move a bishop from one location to another in the fewest number of moves.For example, "How can you move a bishop from f1 to f5?" (Similar drill will be done for capturing on f5). The student should respond either, "Bf1-d3-f5" or "Bf1-h3-f5." After one of those possible best responses, Dr. Root moved the bishop as indicated.

Dr. Root taught mazes to the beginners. After Dr. Root presented a sample maze on the demonstration board, students set up a mazes for each other then captured each chessman in the maze with a rook. From Science, Math, Checkmate: 32 Chess Activities for Inquiry and Problem Solving.